Memory and trauma in a psychiatric unit

Abstract

This essay is based on the idea of the «traumatic memory» which is known as «post-traumatic stress disorder» in more recent psychiatric classifications. Bearing in mind the accelerating pace of medicine related to experience, which is sweeping through European and American societies, it is argued that the psychiatric classification in question has a whole new expression resulting from one of the most tragic pages in our recent history: the Portuguese colonial war (1961-1974).